Some early finds Wednesday, July 23rd, 2014
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We are now on day 3 of Plugstreet 2014. We have got a wide variety of finds coming out of the trenches at Chateau de la Hutte and Plugstreet Wood._
The Finds Team always get quite excited when we can identify and provenance some of the objects we receive. For example, the bottle fragment below didn’t look much when it came in. After cleaning we could read the words “Royal Warrant”. Some cursory research revealed this is likely an Idris Ginger Beer bottle – a delightfully British find in rural Belgium! Lots of complete bottles of this type have been found on the Somme battlefields.
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 Idris Ginger Beer bottle _
Although most people think of fighting in this part of Belgium being associated with the First World War and especially the Battle of Messines in 1917. However this ground also was fought over during May 1940 when parts of the British Expeditionary Force attempted to delay the German advance and keep the “Dunkirk corridor” open for a bit longer. We were excited to find some German cartridge cases. These were cleaned to reveal the headstamps (markings on the base of the case which indicate such things as date and place of manufacture). In this case we had one brass case round made in Magdeburg in 1936, while others were of copper coated steel made in 1938/39. _
 German Mauser round |
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Filed under: A Dig Diary, Archaeology by
Finds Room
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